


We Must Be Saved By Hope

by lucifel



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But it's definately less Wes Anderson and more Bryan Fuller, Depictions of trauma and coping, Difficult Relationships, Except not really because Brendol is just a neanderthal, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misogyny, POV Outsider, Period Typical Attitudes, Racism, Sexism, Step-parents, This is not nearly as dark as the tags make is sound, Unreliable Narrator, benarmie, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: It's the summer of 1979 and Maratelle Hux has been separated from everything she's ever known. Transplanted from the busy streets of London to a hellish American Suburbia, she fills her days wondering about a (presumably) dead woman and playing make believe with her stepson Armitage, a little girl named Rey, and Armie's mortal enemy - one Ben Organa-Solo.Collaboration with amessofkyluxKylux Mini-Bang 2018 Pinch Hit





	We Must Be Saved By Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pinch hit for the 2018 Kylux Mini-Bang (so we apologize for missing the deadline)! The story is fully plotted and mostly written but the back half isn't ready to be posted yet. (Art will be posted with the second chapter). 
> 
> To the prompter: I hope you enjoy this! I misread the tags and didn't realize what you were getting at until I was already half way through writing. If I'd noticed sooner I'd have written something closer to what you requested. I AM SO SORRY.

Standing in the foyer of her new house, Maratelle Hux felt as unmoored as a war bride newly arrived in a foreign land. Surrounded by a sea of uniformly anonymous cardboard boxes and with only a few battered suitcases to act as guideposts she didn’t know where to begin with her so called settling-in. In the kitchen, the appliances were more foreign than they had any right to be and compared to her small London flat, the whole house sprawled like a labyrinth with its American layout set amongst its American _yard_ with its ugly American carpet. It was, in a word, overwhelming.

 

The furniture deliverymen, with their strange slow accents, had distributed all the furniture (all of it new - Brendol had insisted), across the house per whatever written instructions her husband lad left them when he’d placed his order. But the movers, when they’d arrived to find her alone, had simply dumped everything in the front room – wedged tightly between the largest color television she’d ever seen and Brendol’s new FM radio. Exhausted, alone, and hungry, Maratelle wondered if it would be inauspicious for her to spend her first day in her new home crying.

 

“Gee whizz that’s an awful lotta boxes miss!” Came a voice from behind her, “Have you got any kids?”

 

Maratelle all but leapt into the air as she turned. There, in the doorway she’d left open in deference to the summer heat, stood a small, dirty child of maybe six or seven years. A girl, judging by her voice. “Where on earth did you come from?” Maratelle exclaimed.

 

“Alabama.” The girl said, “And California before that but I was too li’l too remember it. I live next door with Dad now.” Leaning forward she peered into the house, craning her neck left and right as if someone or something might be hiding between the boxes. “Butchu didn’ answer my question.”

 

“Oh. Uh… no dear,” Maratelle answered honestly, “I don’t have any children.” Then she remembered. “But I do have a step son. He’s fifteen.”

 

The child looked disappointed, then brightened. “That’s ok then.” She said, “I -.”

 

She was interrupted by the loud growling of Maratelle’s stomach. Maratelle blushed and the child giggled. “I’m terribly sorry.” Maratelle said, “My husband was supposed to come back with lunch before he went to the airport but I think he forgot.”

 

The child’s eyes went wide. “But lunchtime was a whole hour ago!”

 

“Yes, it was.”

 

“And you ain’t got nothin’ to eat?”

 

Maratelle gestured at all her boxes.

 

“That ain’t right.” The child looked at her, expression grim. “I’ll be right back.” She said, running off as quick as her little legs would carry her.

 

Despite herself, Maratelle smiled. Children, it seemed, were still children even here in America. They were flighty, inexplicable little things to be certain, but precious and good for one’s soul all the same. Turning, Maratelle stared once more at her boxes. Perhaps if she began with the ones labeled Kitchen she might find a stray tin of biscuits somewhere.

 

*

 

The doorbell rang half an hour later while Maratelle was unboxing her wedding china. To her surprise, the child had come back, dragging a towering young man behind her.

 

“Miss!” The child said as soon as Maratelle came into sight, “We brought you lunch! Ben cut the vegetables because I’m too little to use the knife but I put the cheese and the bread and the peanut butter all togethe’ for the sandwiches.” She beamed brightly up at the boy, who held her hand in one of his own and a plate in his other. He looked at Maratelle with wide and vaguely terrified eyes. Maratelle smiled, a shy young man then.

 

“Why how very kind of you both.” She said, “Won’t you come in?” The child all but leapt forward, dragging her Ben in behind her.

 

The child, who eventually introduced herself as Rey, (“Short for Rhiannon, like from the Fleetwood Mac song. Mama loved that song.”), chattered ceaselessly as Maratelle all but inhaled the peanut butter and cheese sandwich they’d brought her. (The salad she ate more slowly, with actual dignity and a fork.) Rey was six years old and lived with her father, Luke, in the yellow house next door. Her cousin Ben, aged fifteen, was staying with them for the summer because Rey was his favorite person in the whole wide world. Ben, who was tall and broad for fifteen, ( _he’d be tall and broad for 20_ , Maratelle thought,) didn’t say much but blushed to the tips of his ears at Rey’s unselfconscious assurance at her place in his heart.

 

“I’m here because our Uncle Chewy went missing.” Ben said to the floor in a low, pleasant rumble, “He came back from ‘nam all funny.” He said as he gestured near his head in the universal motion for crazy, “Dad’s worried he’ll do something stupid or something so he and mom went to go look for him.” He shrugged, then hunched defensively in on himself as if it had taken him great effort to say all that.

 

“Well I certainly hope that they find him.” Maratelle said politely, “and that he’s well.” Both children nodded solemnly at her in agreement. The kitchen descended into an awkward silence and Maratelle wondered how she could most politely usher them out so she might continue unpacking. She stared at her sea of boxes resentfully. Some of them were so heavy she couldn’t even budge them – much less lift them. And what she could do would go much faster in trousers but Brendol didn’t approve of women wearing those and she didn’t know when he’d get home so she couldn’t… Maratelle glanced from the boxes to the children, then from Ben’s shoulders back to the boxes.

 

“Ben,” she said slowly, “How’d you like to make twenty dollars today?”

 

Before he could answer, Rey had stood up and grabbed Ben’s hand, swinging it back and forth in supplication she said, “A whole twenty dollars?? Ben, we could get a base station and real walkie talkies with that! And some ice cream!” Maratelle knew, from the combination of puppy eyes and Ben’s twitching mouth, that there was no way the boy would say no.

 

*

 

By the time Maratelle heard Brendol’s car pull up that afternoon, Ben had moved most of the boxes into the correct rooms and Rey had served up two batches of a sour sweet iced drink that Americans apparently called lemonade. It had none of the pleasant soda fountain fizz that Maratelle expected from a _real_ lemonade, but Maratelle and Ben had drunk nearly a pitcher each. The summer heat was such that Maratelle had pulled her hair back and up under an unfashionable kerchief to get it off her neck and Ben had stripped down to his jeans and a worn Hemp necklace from which hung what looked like a cracked, red ruby. Maratelle felt more than a little envy for his strength each time his muscles strained under that glistening sun kissed skin.

 

“We’re home!” Brendol called as he walked in with Armitage, “You wouldn’t believe the delay we had at the airport. And the traffic! It’s like these damned American’s never learned how to drive. They -.” Brendol’s voice cut off as he caught sight of Ben. He eyed the half naked boy suspiciously, then eyed his flushed and dusty young wife. When he caught sight of Rey, empty pitcher in hand, his shoulders relaxed visibly. “And who’s this?” He asked.

 

“I’m Rey.” Said the girl, “and that’s Ben. Are you Miss Maratelle’s father?” She asked guilelessly.

 

Behind Brendol, Armitage snorted a laugh, giving up on dragging his heavy, over packed suitcase through the door and abandoning it where it stood half in the house and half out. From the corner of her eye, Maratelle saw Ben perk up slightly at the appearance of a boy his own age.

 

“Really stepmother,” he said in the posh accent and pretentious cadence he’d learned at Harrow, “you must endeavor to look _just a little_ less beautiful or they’ll soon start asking which of us is the elder.” Sweeping past Brendol, he walked up to Maratelle and laid a cool, indifferent kiss to each of her cheeks in the French way. Turning to Ben, he said, “do you think the help could assist with my bags?”

 

It always amazed Maratelle how clever and cruel her stepson could be. And how stupid too. It was one thing to upset the entire room with a backhanded compliment, another entirely to knowingly induce one of Brendol’s rages. Brendol’s back straightened as Maratelle went white. Rey, no doubt picking up on the moods of the adults, stood silent for the first time all day. But Ben – Ben no longer looked like a too-shy boy with too-big ears. He looked like wrath itself.

 

Ben glared at Armitage, and Armitage, standing loosely in his pressed slacks and school sweater, let his eyes travel from Ben’s bare feet to his torn jeans to the dusty box he held in his straining arms, then up to his sweaty, tangled, too-long hair. When he was done with his appraisal, he raised an eyebrow and sniffed in a way that, like his accent, he’d no doubt picked up at Harrow. For a moment, Maratelle was convinced the boys would fall to fisticuffs but all Ben did was stalk forward and shove the box he was holding into Armitage’s chest. Reflexively, Armitage reached out to take it. But when Ben let go, the weight of the box caused Armitage to stumble forward a step and then drop it at Ben’s feet.

 

Ben smirked.

 

Striding forward, Ben lifted Rey up in one arm, tossing her slightly into the air before catching her with a grin. With his free hand, he picked up the suitcase Armitage had struggled with, lifted it carelessly – effortlessly – and dropped it casually inside.

 

Armitage gaped.

 

“A pleasure meeting you Missus Hux.” He said, “Mister Hux.” Then left, forgetting both his shirt and Rey’s lemonade pitcher.

 

Brendol, always amused to see Armitage put in his place, gwaffed, and slapped a big hand onto the skinny boy’s shoulder.

 

“Americans,” he said, as if the last few minutes had never happened “can’t drive for shit.” Then he glanced at the door, “but they sure are built like real men. Every one of ‘em.” He laughed again, “not like you, eh boy?” Leaving his son to stew in his humiliation, Brendol gave his wife a dutiful kiss and resumed his narration of his day.

 

If he remembered that he’d forgotten to bring her lunch, he didn’t mention it. And Maratelle knew better than to ask.

 

*

 

A week later, the house was almost entirely unpacked. A few boxes remained at the bottom of closets or in tucked away corners but the vast majority of it was now fit for company. It had taken a lot of work, but Maratelle didn’t mind; better to keep busy than to go mad from boredom after all.

 

Boredom, unfortunately, seemed to be a plague Armitage couldn’t escape. He’d complained of it frequently since their arrival in what he rather dramatically termed, “this dreary American hellscape”. He was too young to drive, too old to play, and neither Maratelle nor Brendol would permit him to run up the phone bill phoning classmates back home. (Maratelle had, secretly, asked Brendol about buying the boy one of those new Atari game machines she’d heard of – but Brendol rather logically pointed out that there was no point when Armitage had no friends. _Or brothers_ , he’d added rather pointedly.)

 

From what Maratelle could see, Armitage spent his mornings reading, his lunches complaining, and his afternoons on the back porch scowling out at where Rey and Ben would run about wildly as they played stickball or did cartwheels or played make believe. Today, they had not come outside at all and Armitage, in his usual seat on the porch swing, looked vaguely disturbed by this disruption to his nascent new routine. Luckily, Maratelle was prepared for this eventuality.

 

“Armie darling,” she called as she finished folding the week’s laundry, “could you run this next door for me?” Armitage, who despised being called Armie, scowled at the folded _SPACEWAR!_ T-shirt she held out toward him. “It’s Ben’s.” She explained.

 

For a moment, it seemed that he would say no, but Maratelle had learned early on that if you gave him a moment – if you didn’t back down when he expected you to – Armitage’s bluster would disintegrate like tissue paper in water. Sure enough, after another heart beat, the eager curiosity she’d seen in his eyes that first day won out and he snatched the shirt with a muttered. “ _Very well.”_ , as if Maratelle had worn him down with a litany of nagging.

 

She was careful to wait till he’d left to laugh.

 

For all his airs and antics, Maratelle rather liked her stepson.

 

By the time Maratelle had finished tidying away the laundry, dusting the mantle, and sweeping the stoop, over an hour had passed and Armitage had not returned. When he still hadn’t returned an hour later, after she’d put her summer pudding into the ice box, she congratulated herself for a job well done. In fact, Armitage didn’t return until nearly dinnertime, just as she was taking her vol-au-vents from the oven and calculating how long she’d have to freshen up before Brendol and his dinner guest arrived.

 

“I hate him!” Armitage shouted, hurtling full tilt through the kitchen door. “I hate him!” As he ran past, Maratelle caught a brief impression of a black eye, a bruised cheek, and a split lip. Barely pausing to set her baking tray on a counter, Maratelle ran after him. To her complete un-surprise, Armitage ran straight to his room and slammed the door behind him.

 

“Armitage?” She called through the door.

 

He threw something at it from the other side.

 

“I just want to know if you’re hurt badly.”

 

“Go away!”

 

Maratelle winced, glancing at the hall clock. Brendol would be home any moment now.

 

“Will you at least come to the kitchen so I can give you something to ice your face with?” Another something hit the door, softer this time. Maratelle waited, counting every second that passed. There wasn’t time for this. “Armitage, please.” She begged quietly. All her elation at having done something right for once turing into a rock and settling deep into her stomach. Swallowing, she said, “You know what your father will do if we aren’t ready for dinner.”

 

Slowly, three whole agonizing minutes later, the door opened. Sullenly, Armitage followed her to the kitchen and took the frozen pork chop she handed him. He didn’t explain what had happened, and Maratelle didn’t ask.

 

“I could put some make up on it.” She offered.

 

Armitage only rolled his eyes.

 

“Honestly Stepmother,” he tossed over his shoulder as he once again retreated to his room, “it’s like you don’t know father at all.”

 

*

 

Brendol and his coworker, Rae Sloane, arrived home just as Maratelle managed to close the clasp on her pearls. To Maratelle’s surprise, Rae Sloane was a woman. And a colored woman at that. (Brendol had never specified; and Maratelle had always heard ‘Rae’ and ‘Rey’). Sloane was tall, and stood with a posture so straight an admiral would have envied it. When she spoke, her voice was deep and self-assured. She looked like every inch the sort of ‘uppity woman’ Brendol despised.

 

“You keep a lovely home Mrs. Hux.” She said, “Very… modern.” Her smile was cold, distant, and fully implied that she meant precisely the opposite of what she said. It made Maratelle bristle and made her wish she could show this _Rae Sloane_ who she’d been before her wedding day. Something about the woman made her want to protest that she’d been a barrister – and that her little flat in London had been nothing _like_ this house. But there wasn’t any point to that.   There was only Brendol now, and no doubt this woman regarded her through the lens of him. This tall, stately woman who was clearly clever enough to understand exactly why someone like Brendol would extend her the hand of friendship – and exactly what she’d get from him in return.

 

They drank cocktails and ate canapés in the living room, their conversation stilted and awkward. When it was time for dinner, Maratelle summoned Armitage with no little dread. Unsurprisingly, Brendol greeted his injured son with a derisive laugh. (The alcohol had put him in a good mood). “And who walloped you?” He asked, West Country accent showing through the BBC English he put on for company.

 

“That brute next door.” Armitage replied, crisp constants a mirror of Maratelle’s own. “He disapproved of my _tinkering_ with his toys.” Armitage snorted. “Can you imagine? Six feet tall and he still has _toys_.”

 

Brendol snorted. “You hear that”, he asked Sloane, “I pay four thousand pounds a year for that fancy school of his and he can’t even win a fight against a boy who plays with toys and looks after a little girl all day.”

 

“He’s got almost two stone on me!” Armitage protested.

 

“And that’s no excuse.” Brendol snapped back. Maratelle could see his temper rising. She felt the mood changing in the room. She could never predict what would happen when he -.

 

“Your father is right.” Sloane interrupted. “There will always be someone twice your size.” She said to Armitage. “Or someone twice your speed. Or someone who thinks he’s worth two of you when he’s got half your brains or less.” Brendol missed the subtle slide of her eyes towards him – and the implied insult. But Maratelle and Armitage both saw. “And you can’t just give up and roll over. You fight back harder, smarter, and dirtier. You hit them where it hurts or else you find a way to win them over and you get them eating out of the palm of your hand until you can close your fist and crush them. You get me?”

 

Armitage, who held her gaze, nodded.

 

“Good.” Sloane said, “Now, I’m Rae Sloane and you mist be Armitage Hux. Tell me, they ever teach any boxing at that fancy school of yours?” And just like that they were off. For the rest of the night, Armitage kept Rae Sloane entertained – coming out of his shell in a way Maratelle had rarely ever seen before. Brendol, for his part, was content to eat and drink and only occasionally interrupt with his usual bluster. By the end of the evening, Maratelle was sick with envy at how easily Sloan had connected with her stepson. What she wouldn’t give for that same ease of conversation. How much less lonely her days would be if he came to her for some advice and encouragement now and then.

 

When Sloane got up to leave, Maratelle could tell that Armitage was reluctant to let her go. So, despite all her own misgivings, she invited the woman back for tea on Saturday. Brendol, no doubt, would be out golfing at his club. Sloane accepted readily.

 

“Well I’ll be damned.” Brendol said once Sloane had driven away, “That frigid bitch is a woman after all.” He glanced at Armitage, “Guess some spinsters want children so bad they’ll take a shine to any pathetic thing that comes their way.”

 

Armitage, unperturbed for once, merely asked to be excused.

 

*

In the morning, their mailman arrived at the same time as one sullen teenager and one bossy little girl.

 

“We’re here to see Armie.” Rey announced once Maratelle had politely shooed the mailman away and ushered the children into her front hall. “So Ben can ‘pologize for being a meanie.”

 

Ben, who was flushed red to the tips of his ears, said nothing. He only scowled at his shoes.

 

“Well his apology is not accepted.” Armitage called from the kitchen. No doubt he’d stolen Maratelle’s morning coffee.

 

“You can’t refuse an apology I haven’t even given yet!” Ben snapped in return, “and you’re not supposed to hold on to anger. It’s like holding a hot coal; you’re just going to burn yourself.”

 

Armitage scoffed, “And which of your uncle’s heathen philosophers did you steal that one from?”

 

“The Buddha isn’t -.”

 

“You are a damned phony.”

 

“Well it’s better than quoting Holden fucking Caulfield all the -.”

 

“Language!” Maratelle scolded. She rarely had cause to be strict with her stepson but the vitriol with which he and Ben argued didn’t sit well with her. Before she could bring herself to give a proper scolding, Rey cut in.

 

“Now _you’re_ being a big meanie!” She said with a stomp of her foot. “Fine then. I don’t want to play with EITHER of you anymore.” Turning, she ran out before Ben could catch her round her waist.

 

“Jesus Christ!” Ben shouted, whirling back on Armitage who had crept into the entryway, “How hard is it to accept a fucking apology? She just wanted you to come back and play. I’m sorry I ever _met_ you.”

 

Ben too left slamming the door behind him.

 

In the Kitchen, Armitage’s hands seemed to shake around his coffee cup. Maratelle remembered, quite suddenly, meeting him for the first time and finding him serious and solemn and strange for all that he’d been thirteen and small for his age. She remembered being terrified of breaking him somehow. She wondered every day what his mother would think of her.

 

“You should go over there again,” Maratelle found herself saying.

 

“And do what?” Armitage snapped, hiding distress and perhaps honest confusion behind his father’s angry bluster. “They’re such… such _children_.”

 

“Yes, they are." She regarded him carefully, "And while I suppose you _are_ more grown up than they, you are also unlikely to find any other companions this summer if you don't make nice."

Armitage made to stomp away, then turned back, hesitating. "How?"

Maratelle shrugged. “They’re children aren’t they? Bring cookies and offer to play.” 

 

An hour later, Armitage marched to the neighbor’s house as if to his doom, plate of cookies held before him like a shield. Maratelle suspected that the Skywalker house would soon hear its fair share of angry shouting children – but she also knew what kids were like. There’d be shouting, and then there’d be playing. And eating. And all would be forgiven.

 

Late that afternoon, Armitage returned with grass stains on his trousers and twigs in his disheveled hair. He complained endlessly about Ben Organa and his stupid attachment to make believe games but his eyes were lively and engaged. Maratelle listened and made noises but smiled.

 

Her stepson seemed happy.

 

*

 

After that, the rhythm of Armitage’s days changed – and with them Maratelle’s. In the mornings, Armitage would still read in the sitting room and at lunch, he would still grumble like an old woman. Instead of making snide digs at Brendol and their home however, he would comment on “Ben’s insipid oriental philosophers” or “Rey’s banshee shrieks”.   Inevitably however, lunch would be eaten and Armitage would begin casting furtive, somewhat worried glances at their front and back doors. Usually, these glances would be rewarded with a knock he leapt to answer and a polite (Rey) or note so polite (Ben) request that he “stop hiding inside like a vampire already”. For all that Armitage complained of Rey and Ben’s childishness, he never said no to their games.

 

On the days that no knock came, Armitage wandered about the house with a scowl on his face and a black cloud over his head and Maratelle’s afternoons were spent assigning him chores and subtly talking him down from his visible anxiety. Maratelle wondered sometimes what made him so uncertain of his continued place amongst his peers. (Surely a lifetime of boarding school had shielded him from most of Brendol’s… abrasiveness.) She wondered, too, what his mother would make of it.

 

Maratelle wondered about his mother a lot. She wondered where she was. She wondered if she worried. She wondered, as always, who she was. (Irish, certainly, given Armitage’s looks. Fragile too, if her son resembled her in frame. A faceless woman composed of fair skin and fiery hair and worn hands was as much as Maratelle ever managed to imagine). As Maratelle had heard it, Brendol had simply brought the boy home to his parents one day. The resemblance between father and son – Armitage a pale skinny copy of his burly father – had explained the rest. Maratelle wondered if his mother had named him. (Surely _Armitage_ was Brendol’s choice.) She wondered if she missed him.

 

Maratelle wished, sometimes, that she could tell her all about him.

 

But the days Armitage wasn’t invited next door to play were few and far between and so Maratelle soon found herself with more and more empty hours as June faded to July and July rolled into August. Some days, when the hours dragged longer than she could bear, Maratelle filled her afternoons with grass and sunshine and laughing children.

 

Like today.

 

“Miss Maratelle,” Rey called through the kitchen door, “Can you come play with us? We need a princess for Ben to kidnap.”

 

Maratelle, whose first instinct had been to quip that she was clearly meant to be evil stepmother instead, asked why Rey wasn’t going to play the princess.

 

“Because I’m the hero. Duh.” She took Maratelle’s hand and led her out to the yard where she could be tied to a tree with an old scarf. “Ben’s the evil Wizard-Knight, Armie’s the General and I’m the Champion. That means I’m the hero and I have to save you from them.”

 

Once Maratelle was secured, and Ben had recited some lines (no doubt stolen – but whether from a movie or one of his Uncle’s philosophy books Maratelle could never tell), Ben and Rey ran off into the yard, chasing and dueling each other by turns.

 

Armitage, never fond of the August sun, was left to guard her with two water pistols.

 

“Armie,” Maratelle asked after a few minutes, “are they _actually_ dueling with… _baugettes_?”

 

“Yeah,” Armitage said, sighing and falling out of his stern General Hux persona long enough to roll his eyes, “It's an extension of Ben's Pacifism.” His Pacifism being a thing that he conveniently forgot whenever he and Armitige argued. “He believes that since _breaking bread_ is an act of peace, it’s ok to play fight with bread.”

 

“… I see.”

 

“No, you don’t.”

 

“Well no.”

 

Maratelle thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Do you think he'd like a new encyclopedia?”

 

Armitage laughed, "Really stepmother, it's like you think he _reads_."

 

Maratelle snickered, rather against her will. 

“Die Evildoer!” Rey shouted, close enough again for Armitage and Maratelle to hear. She ducked under Ben’s arm and past him, smacking him across the ribs with her bread. “The darkside will never win!”

 

“Lies!” Ben shouted in return, chasing her towards Maratelle and clutching his side with a dramatic flair he’d no doubt picked up from Armitage. “There is nothing more powerful than the dark! General Hux, stop her before she reaches the Princess!”

 

Armitage grinned. “Unfortunately for you Ben, I’m afraid the Princess here has made me a better offer.” And, winking at Rey, he turned both pistols on Ben, forcing him backwards into the yard as Rey scrambled to untie Maratelle and lead her to the hedges. If they reached the Azalea bushes before Ben caught them, they’d win.

 

The four chased each other around the yard, laughing and shouting like they were all (with the exception of Rey) much younger than they actually were. Eventually, Ben fell giggling into the grass, Rey sitting on his stomach and Armitage shooting water directly into his face.

 

Maratelle ran straight for the Azalea bushes.

 

“I win!” She shouted, and behind her she could hear Rey cheering.

 

“We won!” She screamed, running up to Maratelle and hugging her around the wait. “And Armie got him in the face with the water guns SIX TIMES. Did you see?”

 

“I certainly did.” Then she looked up and her smile froze on her face.

 

Ben stood shirtless, mopping his face with the discarded garment. His neck and chest were littered with small bruises; his back with long scratches. Armitage stood staring at those scratches, eyes tracing over his newly exposed skin not as if he were jealous of the muscles underneath but as if he were hungry. As if…

 

Rey said something, something Maratelle didn’t catch, something that broke Armitage out of his moment, something that wasn’t enough to stop the pounding of blood in Maratelle’s ears.

 

She swallowed. Hard. In an instant, she’d understood something she wished she didn’t.

 

She hoped she was wrong.

 

“We have to go.” She heard herself say. “Now.” Striding forward, she took Armitage by the wrist and dragged him inside.

 

“How long?” She asked, the second the door closed behind them. She knew her voice was somewhere between a sob and a scream but she was too scared to care.

 

“How long… what?” Armitage replied, sounding perplexed and a little alarmed.

 

“HOW LONG?” She asked again, hysteria bubbling through. Maybe she was wrong. There was always a chance.

 

“Stepmother,” He said, a little frightened now, “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

 

Maratelle stepped closer to him, keeping hold of his wrist and grabbing him under the chin with her other hand. Her nails dug into his skin as her eyes roamed over his face. His eyes were guileless and his expression was more worried _for_ her than afraid _of_ her. He was as worried about her as she was about him. Was he really this naive?

 

 _Perhaps,_ Maratelle thought, _it isn’t too late yet._ She loosened her hold. _Perhaps it’s all still just a game to him._ There had always been stories of the boys at Eaton and Harrow. _Just boys being boys_ her father had always said.

 

Maratelle breathed, her chest loosening. “Never mind.” She said, “Go wash up. I want you to empty the boxes in the hall closet today.”

 

Armitage looked like he would rather eat mud, but also like he was still worried. “Are you certain you’re alright?” He asked.

 

Maratelle nodded, covering her face with shaking hands as he left.

 

Perhaps she’d misunderstood.

 

Or perhaps she hadn’t.

 

It couldn’t happen again. Not like this. Not to her _son_.

And Brendol could never, _ever_ , find out.

 

As soon as she felt steady again, Maratelle picked up the phone and called Rae Sloane.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt:
> 
> In 1979 the Hux family moves into a modest old home in a quaint little neighborhood, next to a perfectly ordinary house with a very un-ordinary inhabitant. The Solos' only child is called Ben but insists he be called Kylo, and insists that he's from another galaxy far, far away, and that someday he'll hop on a spacecraft and fly away from everything he knows. Armitage pities him, Armitage loathes his very presence across the fence separating their yards, Armitage tries to ignore him entirely.
> 
> He fails, and then, Armitage starts to understand.
> 
> {basically if Wes Anderson did teenage benarmie}


End file.
